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GIS training materials and tools are available for use in planning REDD+ activities that deliver multiple benefits, including restoration interventions. These tools are aimed at technical staff and focus on mapping biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The activities proposed in 2011 under the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework brought new requirements for monitoring deforestation and forest degradation at national levels (UNFCCC 2011). In this Infobrief, the rules and choices to be addressed by participatory countries in REDD+ activities are outlined, and it is shown some technical problems they can face, and some options they can adopt.

Intensive exploitation and related disturbances have depleted large areas of forests in the tropics in the last decades, and resulted in large and expanding areas of degraded forest ecosystems. In the past two decades national to international to private agencies have invested in numerous forest rehabilitation projects in the tropics. The projects have differed in scale, objectives, implementation strategies, duration, and in how much they considered socio-economic and institutional aspects, which are essential for successful rehabilitation. It is critical to draw strategic lessons from past experiences and use them to plan and guide future efforts, considering many new projects with substantial resource investments are in the offing throughout the region. CIFOR and national partners synthesize, review, derive, and disseminate lessons from past and ongoing rehabilitation projects and research within selected regions of China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Peru and Brazil. The study aims to increase the chances of success of future rehabilitation projects by identifying the approaches that have contributed to longer-term sustainability under different scenarios with minimal negative impacts on different stakeholders.

In this document, we provide guidance on selecting, accessing and tailoring maps that form the crucial basis of this spatially explicit multi-stakeholder planning process. The use of these maps is subsequently described in eight steps of a planning and monitoring cycle, which start with the use of maps to identify important areas in terms of landscape benefit supply (such as water supply and regulation, crop production, habitat provision and moderation of extreme climate events). In a next step, stakeholders share ideas and identify areas where changes leading to improved landscape benefits flows are desired, and identify the current governance actors for these areas. The guide has a specific monitoring element that recommends stakeholders to carefully describe landscape benefits in a measurable, spatially explicit way. Based on the specified landscape benefits and selected areas where change is desired, in a subsequent step, stakeholders jointly discuss how a potential change in the landscape will affect different landscape benefits flows and beneficiary groups. After agreement is reached, stakeholders plan and implement a preferred change in the landscape using a range of maps and involving relevant governance actors. The last step guides stakeholders in setting up a strategy to monitor and evaluate changes in benefits flows after implementation of the planned intervention. Stakeholders are guided to use information about changes in making their landscape planning adaptive to possible future change.

The manual is designed to assist in the mentoring of adult learners. Through practice in using the manual, professionals who are active in capacity building for SLM and related initiatives will develop the competencies needed to train project and program leaders, including M&E specialists, in groups. The manual emphasizes team building to develop effective leadership for SLM and similarly, a team approach to training. Training teams who use the manual to design and facilitate capacity development courses that bring a landscape perspective to SLM M&E should view themselves as facilitators of learning whose primary role is to assist trainees to think deeply and creatively about SLM and ways that monitoring and evaluation can be practiced to improve SLM initiatives and outcomes. The manual is designed therefore, to help training teams establish a climate conducive to learning, encourage learners to draw from their wealth of knowledge and experience to enrich the learning environment, help them identify and utilize a variety of resources to accomplish their learning objectives, and give them a strong role in delivering learning material. Features of the manual to help users develop competency in facilitating the learning of leadership teams about SLM M&E from a landscape perspective are highlighted below.